aa5874

But the Pauline writer in Galatians implied that he used to destroy the faith which he now preached.

Ga 1:23 - It would appear that the Pauline writer was admitting that his kung fu was not new, except modified by revelations from the ascended Jew.

dog-on

In this case the Pauline writer was actually the Lukan writer as Marcion never wrote such a thing in his epistle.

2-J

Well the other lot say Marcion erased such passages from the preexisting epistle...

dog-on

What would you expect them to say?

The fact that we even have things like the deutro-Paulines and the long ending of Mark along with the redactions by Matthew and Luke, tells the tale of the types of shenanigans going on in the formative years.

2-J

I know there were shenanigans, but who's to say they weren't going on on 'both' sides (well, there were more than 2 sides, but you know what I mean).

Maybe this is getting a bit offtopic, just I have never seen a definitive argument to the effect that Marcion presented the epistles in a more original form.

dog-on

Since his version no longer exists, a definitive argument may be hard to come by.

There has, however, been a lot of scholarship done in this area. Check out radikalkritik.de

gurugeorge

Does he say "I once knew"? I thought it was "WE once knew"? i.e. it could just as easily be a teaching context, proto-Gnostic.

Hehe, well I agree it's not proof, but if it's the first place you see it (granted the post 70CE dating of gMark), what else have you got to go on?

Your above, as I say, is a valid construction if you have some other reason to think that there was a historical fellow at an earlier stage, or that there was a folklore myth about a historical fellow (perhaps the very distant chap Wells and Ellegard are seeing?). But I still don't understand where you get the evidence for such, from the texts in chronological order (with the ordinary datings).

I'm just going by the 50-95 listing on earlychristianwritings. I've tried to base my theory on that chronological order - not so much in the belief that that the "consensus" must be right, but just to see what shakes out if you take the standard chronology. (I'm not a scholar, just an interested layabout, ahem, I mean layperson, so I can only go by such things.)

That Hebrews passage could easily just mean those who "heard" or "understood" him in vision (i.e. such as Paul). The passage just before uses a somewhat similar grammatical construction and talks about angels ferchrissakes (i.e. previously the revelations were from mere angels, but this time it's from the horse's mouth.) And anyway, the revelation is from "the Lord", the entity that gives Christ his "priesthood" elsewhere in Hebrews - why should it be "Jesus Christ" being spoken of here at all?

Yes, and I see that what you are doing is accounting for the paucity of reference to historical person/teachings/etc in the earliest texts, by positing that this early and most vociferous champion of the fellow (and his followers, presumably) happened to be a mystic, right?

As I said, that's clever (and not too far from the standard idea, but from a rationalist point of view, and taking more account of the reality and power of mystical experience), but I don't see the need for it. Yes, they're mystics, but in the absence of any external evidence, why do they need to be working off the basis of any real human being at all? And why aren't the earlier ones that Paul talks about mystics too?

Reading 1Corinthians 15 this way: "that, according to Scripture, the Messiah did X,Y,Z, and that he revealed himself to A, B, C, (in visionary experience)". What's wrong with that construction, and why do we need to introduce some historical personage, or story about a historical personage (other than the vaguely historical nature of the revelation itself) at all? Where's the evidence for him, the hint, the giveaway, that we should be interpreting this particular myth euhemeristically at this stage (in the chronology)?

As I'm sure you agree, there's not the slightest shred of any properly external evidence of course - it's not like we can say "ah, other records talk about a remarkable fellow doing such and such, so that must have been the real person behind this myth." So where's the internal hint IN PAUL that there's a human being? Nowhere. So why not stop there - why not just accept that there's no there there, that it's mystical/visionary at root, so far back as we can trace it, and that the heavy historicization comes later? Especially as we have a motive for it, in proto-orthodoxy's desire, as a relative latecomer, to bring the whole mess into order by fabricating a lineage back to supposed Christ-eyeballers? I keep coming back to that pseudo-Clementines bit as a real giveaway to this. The cogency of "Peter's" argument in answering "Paul" there - basically thumbing its nose at everything Pauline and merely visionary, claiming lineage connection back to the Master himself. This is what I mean by the tail wagging the dog - the tail of the need for a better lineage than the lineages from Paul (which the proto-orthodox are annoyed to find already established everywhere they go, but based on mere vision and mystical experience), wagging the dog of the notion that the first disciples walked with Jesus personally (and that the Roman church has bishops descended from those very Christ-eyeballers).

Hang on a minute - the crucifixion is central to the meaning of Paul's teaching. In Paul's myth (which he got from Christ) something, some kind of victory was somehow won by means of the crucifixion. That's what I mean by "the juicy bit".

OK, now if we had other reasons to think there might have been a real person that was crucified, some hint in Paul as I said, that any of the Jerusalem people personally knew a human being called "Jesus", or some kind of independent archaeological evidence, then one very rational move would be to think "ok, maybe they just weren't interested in the life and doings of the man". But why go there? What, about the myth (at that stage, as Paul is outlining it) suggests it's euhemeristic and not pure vision - especially in view of the fact that it's plainly vision for Paul?

Solo

The distinction is without issue; Paul speaks of himself and for his church.

I've got Mark to go on and reading of Paul that complements Mark. You've got reading of Paul which you believe to be mythoid without human agency and you deny that Mark presents (for whatever literary purpose) a historical companionship of Peter, John, and one of the James'es to Jesus, which is to say, you ain't got a helluva lot to go on yourself.

a folklore myth about a historical fellow ?......For all intents and purposes, Mark would be the first one putting Jesus in historical contexts. Why it was him and not Paul, I tried to explain, in my last post, evidently without much effect.
I am not the one you need to apologize to, gg.

I don't think it could mean "easily" that because the Greek text says that the message was declared 'first by the Lord' (ἀρχὴν.... διὰ τοῦ κυρίου) - as against the idea that it was mere angels - and it was confirmed by those who heard him. I start with the assumption that the author would not have used this 'asynchronous' transmission-reception mode of passing the message, if he did not mean something by it. And btw, the writer refers to JC as Lord in 7:14 and 13:20. Also, 10:30 could be the 'transfered Lord' of judgment of Paul and 12:14 very likely also.

Well, first of all, j'y suis pour rien. It's entirely out of my hands that Richard III. was born a hunchback or that God made Paul a mystic who did not like living in the flesh.

Second, you are mistaken if you are imputing to me the belief that Paul was the champion of the fellow. The Paul I envisage wouldn't hear about the fellow.

The fellow appeared to be just an ordinary low-life, who for Paul actually was God's son poorly comprehended. He was God's way to fool the wise, and bring to nothing those who were puffed up. Today, they may be the shit-kings of the universe; tomorrow they are going to be stinking corpses. Every one of them. The poor fellow they justly executed would be sitting in judgment over them. Nothing else really (or historically) mattered to Paul because the Lord was going to beam him up and his elect, and do that soon.

There are two "but"s in the above statement which makes it unreadable. At any rate, I don't think there would be rationalist backtalk to the idea that for the earliest groups what Jesus said and did on earth would not have mattered much, if they talked each other into believing they were having Jesus on the mystical hot line.


Well that's a simple one: there is no need to believe anything. Beliefs suggest themselves. However, in our case we are trying to figure out what they did believe and what was what in their social construct of reality.

Peter could have been a mystic, too. Bultmann actually popularized the idea that Peter himself had resurrection visions. So was he a mystic ? Or a thaumaturge ? He had a way with the Spirit, Acts assures us. Simon Magus was said to be impressed. So was he some miracle worker himself ?

You decide.

Funny, I thought X,Y,Z was done to the Messiah, rather than him doing it. At any rate, you need the bits of the texts together with other passages to get something out of them. I happen to believe that the 1 Cr 15:3-11 from which you quote was fabricated post-Paul to argue that the mystical 'resurrection' sightings (which were based on Paul's articulation of ecstatic glory and OBE) was actually a common occurence, and established the apostolic hierarchy...and BTW Paul was the last in line to get one. James, the law-thumping Jew who never took a bath, only got his after five hundred brothers were confirmed before him.

Again, that would not be something you an I can do much about. My only certainty about the fellow, if I have one, is that he preached the end of the world, ran into trouble with the authorities and was unceremoniously dispatched. I take it that some Jews did not agree with the last part.

Gg, you answered your own question. I am sure you are aware of the scores of readers of Paul who disagree with you. One of them btw, is someone by the name of G.A.Wells. He figured that Paul thought of Jesus as a human being who lived on earth a long time before his time.

Why not indeed ? It's been a pleasure....

Regards,
Jiri